Whipped, Winded, Worn and Wowed in Peru

You’ll recall that we had discovered a means of converting US currency to Argentine pesos on the black market at twice the official rate.  Having a few hours to kill on our last day in Buenos Aires after packing and checking out of our hotel, we took a stroll taking us down a street we had skipped in order to give the road a chance for sights we might see.  The first sight Susan saw was a blouse adorning a storefront manikin.  She liked it a lot and since I did have one last $100 bill stashed away, she retrieved it and converted the greenback to pesos.  We returned to the store. Susan bought the blouse, the matching pants and belt on the manikin and the same pants and belt in different colors.  Coincidentally, the bill came to $101. We left Argentina with three dollars in currency to our name.

For our first day in Lima, we headed out for a walk, stopping by the Incan Market. The stalls were mostly closed and the open ones selling stuff we didn’t want anyway. We then made our way to the Huaca Pucllana Site Museum, a huge mound built around the year 600. At a little park near the museum a dead man was covered with a blue tarp. We were told he had taken his own life. The police and ambulance were there tending to the situation. Onlookers paused but did not linger. We had ice cream to wait out the clock for our escort and took an English speaking tour of the restored site. The guide’s static megaphone along with her face mask and accent made the narrative rather useless. But I was still fascinated with the accomplishments of people so long ago, equipped with few tools we would recognize, able to design and erect things that remain standing today. Until the excavations in 1980 or so, this was just a big hill in town used for dumping trash and motorcycle hill climbing.  Once again, I hold to my theory that anything is possible with enough time and forced labor.  As we left, the dead man was still slumped half off a park bench and half on the ground, draped with a blue plastic tarp flapping in the breeze.

We took an Uber to Parque del Amor. It was a sweet setting overlooking the Pacific and we enjoyed it as intended. There was some sort of public engagement taking place. Several girls were in colorful costumes primping themselves. Perhaps it is customary for women in Lima to initiate engagements in public and with pizzazz.  A pretty young girl had a banner printed with “Will you be my beloved?”, or something to that effect and had even hired a film crew to record the occasion. She too was dressed in native garb and danced an enticing little jig for the groom-to-be, presenting him a box of treats and delights.  He not only declined her invitation, but also rather demonstratively tossed the box of gifts to the ground. I thought it was a show, but Susan said it was the real thing based on conversation with those involved. She yelled out, "¡déjalo!“ (leave him!) to the weeping girl.  I figured it was a good day for the girl in that she was lucky not to have attached herself to such a creep.

Our flight to Cusco was a nail biter and one of those landings where the pilot had to bank so steeply just before lining up with the runway that all we could see was ground out the left and sky out the right.  Making things a bit more thrilling, we couldn’t even see the wingtips through the dense clouds until just before making that dive away from the mountain dead ahead and toward the airport.  I was keenly aware the pilot had the same view of nothing (una vista de nada) as I reflected on the many tales of planes lost in the Andes. These incredibly rugged mountains have no single crest, but are topped with sharp jagged edges like the teeth of an old two man tree saw.

The town of Cusco is an overgrown pueblo with plenty of colonial buildings, narrow streets and a thousand souvenir shops. We’ve had our obligatory coco tea claimed to prevent altitude sickness. We haven’t noticed anything beyond being a little winded and perhaps lightheaded off and on.  We took a mile or so jaunt to a supermarket outside the tourist area and were rewarded with storefronts selling cement mixers, tillers, tractor parts, tires, batteries and accessories. The exteriors of most of the common buildings have a quaint appearance of failing stucco that makes such places so charming to us.  It’s likely the owners and occupants are not so thrilled.

We were excited to take a pre-booked tour to see the sights of the Sacred Valley, but it was a bust. The driver drove like a maniac from site to site, the guide explained very little and rushed us at every stop. We spent more time in “seeing how the natives make jewelry and mine salt” stores (where they happen to sell jewelry and mined salt) than we did at the ruins.  The buffet luncheon was in a huge dining room that catered to tour buses - our least favorite setting.  I was glad when the day ended.  So much for not making our own arrangements on the fly.

On Sunday, We caught the first train to Aguas Calientes for a scenic ride down the Urubamba River gorge.  It was incredible.  We’ve been through Glenwood Canyon many times and this ride put that truly spectacular Colorado River run solidly in second place.  I had never seen mountains so high, so steep, so ragged and so rugged.  The river current was so strong that it seemed to keep up with our clickety clacking train car until we reached the end of the line.

While buying tickets, we hired a guide who looked the part and were rewarded with a private tour by an Incan man who claimed to be descended from the common people of Machu Picchu. His soft spoken English was passable and Spanish better. The gentle young man’s native tongue was Quechua. He taught us a few handy words that I forgot within minutes.  Our guide did a great job and the experience made up for yesterday by leaps and bounds.  Machu Picchu was everything it was advertised to be. The lost city is nestled high up and into the steepest and most striking mountains you can imagine. My first view came just as we crested a knoll and the scene really did take my breath away.  Here we were!

The Incas had no written language and no European visited this place until the 1800's - about 300 years after the city was abandoned.  There are no written records of Machu Picchu while it was inhabited. The names of the buildings, their supposed uses, and the  inhabitants are all the product of archeologists.  Everything we think we know about Machu Picchu is surmised.

So who am I to describe it?

We are working this morning on finding a ride back to Cusco so we can catch our flight to Ecuador.  It was one of things I did not arrange in advance.  We'll do it on the fly.